AN: So I know I've gotten a few good reviews (thanks guys!!) but what I want to know is if anyone is really interested enough for me to continue. Really, I've got like 12 pages on my computer, but I'm not sure if I should post them or not. (And not all of them are flashbacks!) No, really, I'm not being a tease, and if one or two people are really interested, then I'll keep going. And in the meantime, our favorite Cajun!

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When the doorbell rang a few days later, Hank was relieved. Laurel had spent the past two days pacing restlessly back and forth through the house. She would get on her bike and be gone for hours, and Hank worried for her. She was strong, but he wondered if this ordeal would break her. From what she had mentioned, this was the closest she had ever come to locating her good friend Logan, and yet she was still so far away. He had been asking her about how she knew Logan to get her mind off of things, but it turned out to be a bad idea. All what he had gleaned is that they were childhood friends, and anything else mentioned set her off again, pacing or moving away.

He smoothed down his hair and answered the door. Blinking in shock, he stared at the young man leaning cockily against the doorframe. The teenager surveyed his form with cool eyes, the corneas black and the irises red. He was wearing a large trench coat, his thick dark auburn hair pulled back with a headband. He winked at Hank. "I be lookin' for de Belle," he said in a thick Cajun accent. "'Tis funny that I be findin' de Bet instead, no?"

"Remy!" shouted Laurel, running past Hank and leaping into the young man's arms. "It's about time. What the hell took you so long?" she chided as the Cajun swung her around.

"Oh chere, you know de Gambit takes his time," he said, setting her down on the ground. "I had tah make a stop along de way."

She frowned at him. "You didn't steal anything, did you?" When he grinned, her mouth turned into a moue of cynicism. "You're going to keep your hands to yourself while staying here," she said, obviously trying to repress a grin. "Or if you take anything, you're giving it back when you leave, right Remy?"

"Aw, but chere," he started, and she waved a finger in his face.

"Remy, I expect you to be on your best behavior." When he grinned toothily at her, she smiled back. "Hank, this is Remy le Beau, otherwise known as Gambit. He's got the stickiest fingers and smarmiest manners in the entire South. Remy, this is Dr. Hank McCoy. He's the world's leader in genetic research. Be nice." The last sentence was directed at both men, and when Remy offered his hand, Hank took it warmly.

"Call me Gambit," Remy said. He shot a glance at Laurel. "Even though this chere's got more names than King Tut, she don't understand a person's need tah pick dey're own. Laurel's always been good enou' for her. Now is you Hank, or just dah Beast?"

"Either will be fine," Hank said, unable to stop himself from liking this roguish Cajun. He mulled it over in his mind as he led the way to the lab. The Beast. He liked it, he thought, grinning ferally.

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Laurel watched Remy as she perched on the edge of the table next to the woman. "Well?"

Remy tapped the metal leaking from the woman's tear ducts. "I think you overestimate my abilities, chere," he said. "She dead."

"She's not dead. Look, just charge up the metal enough so that it melts slightly, alright? Once it's out of her body, then we'll see." Laurel could feel the healing mutation working away in the woman. It was slower than Logan's, but it was still there, keeping the body in stasis. It was as if the woman had been cryogenically frozen like they used to try in the nineties. She was still alive. The trick would be to get all the metal out before her body ran out of energy. Remy was her only hope: there was no way that they would be able to get the metal hot enough to get it out of her body without burning the woman to a crisp every time. Surgery to remove the metal was impossible. If Remy could charge it enough it would eventually melt, because adamantium doesn't explode. The only other person she knew who could help her now was Erik Lensher, and she didn't want to have anything to do with him. He had probably forgotten she even existed, even after she helped him and Xavier build the school.

"Shall we begin now, or wait until after dinner?" asked Hank. Laurel shot him glance out of the corner of her eye. He seemed to like Remy. That was good, because the last thing she needed was two men having a testosterone war around her. She mused over it; Hank was mature enough to understand how to act around the younger, more impetuous Remy. And so long as Remy understood that Hank was her friend too, then everything would be fine.

"Now," she said decisively. "The first place we want to start with would be the stomach. That's where it entered, and you can still see the rim of adamantium around the fill, right? Ok. Gambit," she said, deferring to Remy's preference of name, "I need you to try to charge the stuff in her torso first. The sooner we get her heart beating by itself, the better."

Remy nodded, suddenly serious, and reached out a hand. He was sweating profusely by the time the adamantium started to melt. Laurel reached out with her slight telekinesis and power over liquid and began to push the sluggish, half-melted material out of the way. The adamantium began to crawl out of the woman's stomach wound, inch by inch. Hank stepped forward, to take an iron spatula and scrape it off and dump it into a nearby bucket. When Laurel moved the adamantium, she shifted the stuff higher in the woman's body to where Remy was heating it up, so all what Remy had to do was concentrate on one place at a time.

When about six inches of the stuff had leaked from the woman's body, Hank called a halt. "You have to stop. She can wait, but if you wear yourselves out like this on the first time around, it'll be weeks before you can do it again. Let's just take this one step at a time, alright?"

Remy nodded, and put a shaking hand out on the table. "He's right, chere. This thief feels like someone put Gambit trew de ringer."

"Ok," Laurel said, knowing that she couldn't go on by herself. "What's for dinner, Hank?" she asked, sending him a weak smile. She knew he hadn't been planning on cooking dinner.

"We're barbequing tonight," he said, surprising her. At her look, he smiled. "Who's the God of Logic?" he asked innocently. "I plan ahead."